The Efficiency Map has been developed by the members of the NHS Productive Time Delivery Board. Its key purpose is to present initiatives to modernise service delivery, pay and workforce strategies, and IT systems within the NHS in a coherent way, highlighting expected benefits to front-line NHS of delivering the wider modernisation agenda, which ultimately will generate efficiency gains across all local health communities. It describes how process redesign can simplify the way some patient services are delivered, how skill-mix changes may result in a lower net cost, increased output or improved quality such as reduced treatment delay. It outlines how ‘NHS Connecting for Health’ is bringing modern computer systems to improve patient care and services. Over the next ten years it is expected to connect over 30,000 GPs to almost 300 hospitals and give patients access to their personal health and care information, transforming the way the NHS works.The map is available at: http://www.dh.gov.uk/assetRoot/04/11/05/61/04110561.pdf

Patients have been given new assurances that they will retain control over access to their health records when new databases are launched next year. The newly-published Care Record Guarantee sets out rules governing information held by the NHS Care Records Service, the health record system, which will start to be rolled out across England.It makes 12 commitments to patients about their medical records, including a pledge that access by NHS staff will be strictly limited to those who need it to provide effective treatment. It promises, too, that in due course, patients will be able to block parts of the information to stop them being shared except in an emergency.

The number of offenders being recalled to prison after being released on licence has more than trebled in the last five years and is set to increase further according to a report today from the Prison Reform Trust, which is calling for a review of the standards for breach of licence conditions and more support to help offenders to stay in the community.The report, “Recycling Offenders Through Prison”, says the dramatic rise in people being returned to jail is one of the hidden factors behind the rising prison population. Such prisoners, it says, make up nearly ten per cent of the inmates in some local prisons.